Surface characterization methods for quality assessment of polyethylene-coated paperboard

Abstract: In manufacturing processes, the quality of a product often depends on its surface, and careful control of surface properties is critical to meet customer requirements. A thin layer of polyethylene (PE) is applied to paperboard to increase barrier functionality and high optical quality of the product. For PE-coated paperboard, product quality inspection is performed at the end of the manufacturing process by taking a portion of the reel to the laboratory for quality inspection. These associated offline characterization methods are destructive and time consuming and are representative of only a small portion of the product.The overall goal of this thesis is to provide new methods to characterize the Surface properties of PE-coated paperboard. Specifically, to determine imaging techniques for measuring surface parameters that affect its barrier functionality and surface roughness.In this thesis, two methods for surface characterization of PE-coated paperboard are presented to quantify the two most important product-related quality parameters, i.e. barrier functionality and optical quality, which are affected by the presence of defects in the coating and by the surface roughness of the product, respectively. First, a full-Stokes imaging polarimeter (FSIP) is used to detect the presence of PE-coated material and to distinguish between coated and uncoated samples at the pixel level. Second, a three-dimensional scanning electron microscope (3D SEM) is employed to calculate the Surface roughness of PE-coated paperboard. These surface characterization techniques offer an advantage over the industry standard due to the high speed and non-contact nature of the measurement, while increasing the throughput of the sample surface parameters studied.A classification accuracy of 99, 74% is achieved using a FSIP to distinguish between PE- and non-PE-coated paperboard at pixel level. Using the 3D SEM technique to measure the topography of PE-coated samples results in a faster method that is comparable in accuracy to a chromatic confocal microscope (CCM). The surface roughness measured with the 3D SEM differs from the standard method by up to 6% and good agreement with statistical parameters is found.In general, surface analysis of PE-coated is often a complex and difficult task for imaging techniques and suitable methods need to be evaluated for their sensitivity to measure the desired surface parameters. The presented characterization techniques inspect larger areas of PE-coated paperboard compared to current industry standards. These methods provide a quantitative solution for surface characterization to inspect the surface parameters necessary to assure the product’s quality.